United We Suffer: Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism and Twentieth-Century «Auslandsdeutschtum» in M. V. Rubatscher’s «Das Lutherische Joggele»

Abstract

The sixteenth-century migrations of Anabaptist communities within Europe, particularly Tyrol, becomes an important literary theme for the Austrian novelist Maria Veronika Ru­batscher who draws parallels between the relocated fellowship and the German-speaking minority in Italy after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Discussing the portrait of Tyrolean Anabaptism in her novel Das Lutherische Joggele, this paper shows how the author utilizes the movement’s history as a means of expressing her nationalistic iden­tity.